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Edit: Guiz I'm talking about compression/artifacting and not about the stars. You're clear on that, right? This image has a fairly high amount of general noise in the image. It looks like a shot with a greater resolution and higher quality would look much nicer, as this is obviously a beautiful image made by a talented photographer.

I don't know much about photography but from what I understand its not possible to see something like that with the naked eye. Apparently these are called "long exposure shots" and the camera is left on or a while to gather as much light as possible.

To say it's fabricated implies that what's in the photo wasn't actually there. You're wrong about that. The shot is exposed for the stars so it's the moon that's blown out. Notice that it and the clouds looks more like a sunny day. Also if you zoom in you can see that it's very noisy and the stars are streaked. High ISO/30 sec exposure would get a shot like this. Pretty easy to tell the difference between this and a composite shot where they expose one shot for the moon and one for the stars and combine them. Those are the ones you're thinking of.

I've done DSLR timelapses around the world for History Chanel, Discovery Chanel and HGTV. I can guarantee you that you do not get the milky way if the moon is in the sky. This is likely two shots taken at different times of the night, one with the moon and one without the moon that they put together in post. That makes it fabricated. Obviously it is a lot harder to tell when things are done properly than you think. Also I hate to say that if you ever see a perfectly non flickering sunset time lapse that turns into stars that it is also an assembled time lapse cause the cameras can't do that yet.

EDIT: Also the noise in the stars come from having an ISO at a minimum of 1600 ISO most likely higher and capturing it as a RAW sequence and then bringing up the mids to get proper exposure on the landscape. Any exposure over 40 seconds you start to see star trails so you shutter speed would have to be around 30 seconds

There are apps that do a pretty good job at getting rid of flicker but it's still not perfect. Something like LRTimelapse is pretty good but not perfect. The only flawless way to do it would be to lock everything manually for the sunset and then wait for the night sky to redo your settings and do a crossfade in post. Looks legit as an end result.

Yeah, that sounds right. I may have over estimated what a camera can do at night but I stand by my first point. I don't think its fair to call it a fabrication. A composite, sure. But you're definitely right. The stars are streaking at the wrong angle on the left side compared to the right side and they're not streaking at all along the milky way. How'd he get the noise to be so consistent though? I think that's what threw me off.

Well if I was to take a shot at guessing I would say that they have a couple of masks going on. A feathered mask on the Horizon cause you want to catch the cloud movement and then another feathered mask that runs parallel to the milky way. The give away would be the colour in the sky going from darker to lighter blue. Again it's an educated guess and far above what I do on shows (I usually have an editing/GFX team taking in my stuff and making it work). In terms of consistency with the noise they could have just applied a filter across the entire frame to make it look consistent cause the ISO to expose for the landscape would be considerably lower than that for the milky way.

I'm on the fence for the calling it just a composite instead of a fabrication. Yes all those elements where there but naturally you would not even perceived things like in the photo with the naked eye. Totally get your point though, just trying to use wording other than "Fake" cause this shot is awesome and that time-lapse would look amazing.

As for my job, it's pretty interesting. Long days though when you take into account that you have to film every sun rise, sun set, night sky, steady cam operate/time lapse during the day and be the digital media technician on the show. Usually run on 3-4 hours of sleep a night for weeks on end so it has its perks but is insanely demanding. But I'm now moving on the be Director of Photography with my first History Channel show in a couple of weeks in the Yukon. It's pretty fun

One day for sure but not until I have time to do it properly. I'm sure it would eat up a day. I've thrown you on my friend list so I'll send you a message when I do. If you have any questions feel free to PM me and I can see what I can do.

Good on you for living out my fantasy. As for the 3-4 hours of sleep; I've done that on jobs that I don't care for and for likely less money and definitely less satisfaction for months on end (navy). Seems so worth it in your case though. So, stay awesome. Can you say what shows?

Bigger ones would be Survivorman and Beyond Survival. I've done a good amount of History Channel one off specials and HGTV was mostly renovation shows that make me want to die. 2 for the pocket 1 for the soul. I'm going into a new show for History but can't talk about it till it airs

We only see half the galaxy. And it appears to be that we are looking at e whole thing bc the distances are so great it appears they are a different galaxy. But we really are just looking at only one half of the galaxy

There are shuttle bus tours that take you to the peak regularly. When I was on the Big Island, I took one. Here's how I remember it:

Meet at a shopping center near Kona. They issue you a parka. Apparently, the top of the world can be a little chilly, even in Hawaii.

Drive to Mauna Kea.

Take the road up to a research station at about 9000'. You hang here for about an hour or so, presumably to acclimate to the altitude. The guide talks about what you are going to see, how to not screw up your night eyes, altitude issues, etc.

Drive to the peak. This is actually fairly harrowing. There are no guardrails on the side of the volcano as you drive up.

The top. Man, it's amazing. You feel like you are on another planet. The landscape is dotted with cinder cones and observatory domes. You are above the clouds. Definitely cold. A bit hard to breathe. I got a bit of a headache. Stay at the peak until sunset.

After sunset, head back down to 9000' to do a stargazing. It wasn't a huge telescope or anything but you could see a lot of cool things. You try not to waste too much time looking at the moon.

I'm jealous. I went to the big island a few months ago for my honeymoon. I wanted to go up to the top really bad. We took the small road heading to the observatory, but my wife ended up starting to not feel well before we reached it, so we ended up turning around. :(

Serious regret! I'm going to send her this picture from the OP though to show her what she missed!

I don't think so. I live on the island and I've never heard about medical checks before going up. It is high altitude, but it's not super high altitude. Plus, there's a road all the way to the top so it's not like you can't descend in an emergency.

Tour groups go up there to watch the sunset, and I think Gemini is usually willing to do tours.

But if you're talking observing observing, like gathering scientific data, that's pretty much all done remotely nowadays. If you're talking "take awesome pictures" observing, you're better off with a nice camera and a tripod at the summit than inside one of the domes.

Naa i was talking about scientific observing. I know it's done remotely now, but I think you can get short telescope duty jobs to get to actually drive the thing. I've done both remote observing and sitting-in-the-thing-feeling-it-move observing, and the latter is just so much better i reckon. I mean going home to sleep in your own bed at then end of the night is nice an all, but it just feels so disconnected.. And of course then there's just ordering the data and having nothing at all to do with it's collection - no fun at all :)

Okay, gotcha. I agree, actually being there makes observing a lot more fun. Unfortunately, they don't often let graduate students take the wheel. They're worried we'll break their multi-million dollar piece of equipment, I guess...

When I was up there I felt like a bag of shit. My brother and our wives were fine, but I could barely stand up and my eyes felt really weird. I was really nervous driving back down, but it was fine once we got to the station just below.

Altitude sickness is definitely a beast. Wife and I decided to "hike" to Lake Waiau on our way up to Mauna Kea. Having hiked the Inca Trail a few years back, we didnt think it would be that bad. Well.. the little hike just absolutely killed us. So much so that when we finally made it up to the observatory, all we wanted to do was go back down.

The vividness is what I hope for. I'm up in VT and in darker portions you can see the Milky Way as a pale cloud stretching across the sky, but that's about as much detail as we can hope for without a camera

I never said that I saw it like this, I don't think it's possible anywhere. This is a heavily manipulated and processed photo. The comment I responded to said that you can't see the Milky Way in Europe. I've easily seen it while on top of a mountain during an inversion. Have also seen it by finding darks spots on light pollution maps and going to the darkest areas when the moon isn't above the horizon. You can see the Milky Way in many places in Europe.

Lovely photo as this is, isn't it very oversharpened? You can see black halos around each star, and aliasing along the ground. Additionally, the noise from the camera is greatly exaggerated by the sharpening, there are a lot of bright pixels that aren't stars.

How much of this would you actually see in person? As I understand off to the left is lighter due to the moon and long exposure. The right is how it'd look a little more normally. Would you see whatever astronomical thing that is cutting diagonal across the middle? (I'm sure I sound really stupid saying that)

Cause if it looked anything like that in person I'd shit myself at the view.

That "astronomical thing" is the Milky Way. It's certainly visible, even from sea level (depending on local light pollution), but never this brilliantly. It'll certainly look brighter at that altitude, but this is a long exposure, so it looks a whole lot brighter here than it would in person.

We're located on the edge of the milky way on one of its "arms" that projects from the center out. When we see the milky way in the sky we are looking inwards to its center from its outer reach. Hope that helps to explain.

It's like being part of a crowd at a sporting event or a parade. You are part of the parade, but you can also see everyone else around you. The Solar System is within the disk of the Milky way, in one of the spiral arms, so that image of the milky way is like looking "edge on" into the disk. We can look 360 degrees around and still see the disk we are in.

This kind of pictures puzzle me. Is the milky way visible anywhere on Earth? I have never seen that in my life. I understand why you cant see it in a populated area (light pollution) but I've been to places where you can see the stars and still.

Not so clearly as this image suggests. If you go far from city lights or other strong lights on a clear moonless night you can see the faint band flowing over the sky. Your eyes might have to get used to the darkness for 10-20 minutes before you can see it. Here are some tips.

Yes you can. I see it all the time in outback Australia. Don't forget though, this is just a section of the Milky Way. It pisses me off when people say 'look its the Milky way!' no it's a small section that we can see. We are in fact surrounded by the Milky Way as our solar system is a part of its greater system.

I've been on top of Mauna Kea at night. It was the most stars I've ever seen and the Milky Way was super easy to see. Plus it was cold and windy as hell. I could lean into the wind and not fall over. One of the most memorable moments I had in Hawaii.

A more mundane question: how do you stay on top of MK after sunset? When I was there, the ranger came around right as the sun set and told us to get outta there. Do you need special permission? Or do you just sneak out and hide out on the peak?